Bookstories Newsletter August 2010
 | ||||||||
 Time to read novels and sunscreen labelsDear Bookstore Friends, I am writing you this letter from Carlsbad, California where I am vacationing. I'm on my sixth day and my third book. As I drag my beach chair, umbrella and bag of snacks across the sand each day my eyes are peeled for people reading. In an age of e-books and electronic readers, the beach appears to be one place where good ol' p-books still abound in abundance. My nosy self wants to see what each sunbather has chosen but I can't get quite close enough to make out the titles.
I see typeface and graphics that make me think that James Patterson is still popular and the man next to me was reading a Vince Flynn thriller yesterday—I peeked when he jumped up to take a cool off dip in the ocean. My beach rental housemates—sister, brother-in-law, husband and niece—have found lots to read among the books that I brought along. So far my sister Judy has read the debut thriller, The Debba by Avner Mandelman (compelling; good insights into the complexity of Israeli politics and culture) and Jacqueline Winspear's latest Maisie Dobbs' novel, The Mapping of Love and Death (a good beach read; fun to watch Maisie mature as a detective and young professional woman, but a bit too cookie-cutter in the plot structure). Brother-in-law Jamie read one of my favorite novels of the year, Maggie O'Farrell's, The Hand that First Held Mine. Bobby read the late Jose Saramago's Baltasar and Blimunda (one of the Nobel laureate's earlier novels that had been highly recommended by a review in the New York Times) and is avidly reading the novel I just finished and was raving about, The Great Man by Kate Christensen. I hadn't read any of her many novels and this one, strongly recommended by a friend in London, was wonderful. I'm saving her latest, Trouble, to read before I return home. I just finished my friend Debra Ginsberg's latest, The Neighbors are Watching, after staying up late into the night reading this page turner of a novel. My niece, Talia, is in medical school and has little time to read but I gave her Ann Beattie's newest collection of short stories to take home with her—hopefully she'll be able to squeeze in a story or two in-between her rounds and clinical studies.  These lazy days of vacation were preceded by the usual insanity of trying to clear my desk, finish the fall book buying season, and this year, after watching a video called, The Story of Cosmetics, figuring out what sunscreen wouldn't kill me while protecting me from the sun. Sometimes friends send me links to YouTube videos and I wish they hadn't because I feel compelled to do something after I watch them. This one in particular really disturbed me as I found out that all the so-called organic products that I use on my hair, my face, my hands, my nails and my skin have more harmful ingredients than helpful ones and may be causing all kinds of chemical reactions in my body that are not good for me. I threw out several drawers full of carcinogenic shampoos, lotions, lipsticks, soaps, deodorants and toothpaste and tried to figure out what I could use instead. The website safecosmetics.org was exceedingly helpful in listing those products that are safest to use but shopping for them was no easy matter. In addition to toothpaste from Trader Joe's, I managed to buy five different kinds of sunscreen online and we have been testing them all here at the beach. There is a bill in Congress now, the Safe Cosmetics Act of 2010, that attempts to force the FDA to regulate the cosmetics industry so that we who use their products can be assured of their safety. But like other bills before Congress, the chances of passing are minimal. The lobbyists seem to have the lawmakers in their pockets—perhaps cancer, allergies, hormonal disruptions, birth defects, infertility and other health problems don't worry those who manufacture such products or those who work for them in Washington, D. C. Perhaps their loved ones are immune to these medical issues but for the rest of us who seem to learn of a friend or family member's diagnosis of cancer almost weekly, this seems a larger concern and one that is so easily remedied. Why not eliminate those chemicals that cause disease and replace them with the many available that don't? Why not rid our products of petroleum, dyes, fragrances, and ingredients whose names are unpronounceable and cause worse problems than the ones we are seeking to cure? If putting sunscreen on our skin ends up causing cancer or other serious health problems (Vitamin A in sunscreen is a known carcinogen, oxybenzone causes hormonal disruptions) not keeping us safe, why does the FDA allow manufacturers to use them in their products? I think our legislators need to hear from us. Please contact your elected officials and ask them to support this common-sense legislation! Putting on sunscreen and relaxing at the beach should lengthen our days, not shorten them. I hope you are vacationing or stay-cationing or reading a good novel this summer. Come in and visit us and let us know how your summer is going. ~Gayle~  In Memoriam Our friends, the Shareefs (Sam, Shara, and their daughters Shahan and Shagul) who owned our favorite Efes Turkish Cuisine in our complex journeyed back to their Iraqi homeland to visit their families in early July. While there, Shara and Shagul were killed in a car accident. Shara's parents and her sister and niece were also killed and Shahan sustained serious injuries but is healing. This was a devastating loss to all of us who know and love this family that had adopted Arizona as their home. Shara was an incredible mother to her two daughters; the childhood sweetheart and beloved of her husband, Sam, and the cement that held the restaurant and the transplanted family together in America. Sam's father told us when we visited them recently that Shara was the "irrigation that watered their families; allowing them to grow and thrive in their transplanted home." She was a dear friend, a generous woman, a loving mother and a beautiful soul. Her daughter, Shagul, played with dolls, loved the neighbor's cat, drew pictures for me that hang in my office, and was a beauty, like her mother. We are planting two trees in our new landscape for them—a sweet tangerine and a desert-loving Anna Apple and when we eat the fruit in a few years we will remember the wonderful friends who graced our lives and brought sweetness and beauty to all who knew them. ~Gayle~ |
| |||||||
New Religion by Bill Holm This morning no sound but the loud breathing of the sea. Suppose that under all that salt water lived the god that humans have spent ten thousand years trawling the heavens for. We caught the wrong metaphor. Real space is wet and underneath, the church of shark and whale and cod. The noise of those vast lungs exhaling: the plainchanting of monkfish choirs. Heaven's not up but down, and hell is to evaporate in air. Salvation, to drown and breathe forever with the sea. "New Religion" by Bill Holm, from The Chain Letter of the Soul: New & Selected Poems. © Milkweed Editions, 2009. » Back to Top | ||||||||
| FUN THINGS Notes from Changing Hands' Twitter Feed:
PROTOTYPE: Matching Innovators With Shoppers | The Daily Grommet, a Web site, endorses companies that it says offer outstanding products and service; it gets a share of revenue from sales on the site. | ||||||||
Blind Yoga Teacher Offers Class at Inner Vision's Chandler Studio By Jim Price [Abridged]  It was an intersection she had driven through a thousand times. She was a barista at an upscale coffee bar near Phoenix on her way to work at the job she loved. She braked to a stop and her world changed forever. Cindy Rogers was suddenly lost on her home turf because she couldn't see well enough to know where she was. That night she hung up her car keys for good. "For me and my personality, it was probably a good thing," she said, shaking her head at the memory. "It scared me into vocational rehabilitation, cane work, and orientation and mobility training. I had been resisting all of that for years." Rogers was born with retinopathy of prematurity, a common cause of blindness that gets progressively worse. By the time she reached her early 40s, the disease finally claimed most of her vision. "And the first thing I did was get mad," she said. "It was a real struggle with a lot of anger and resentment. Finally, after several years, I just told myself, 'This is ridiculous. Time for some changes.'" One of those changes was to get a guide dog. After that her life began changing rapidly. "Suddenly I had more confidence. I hated using the cane, getting it caught in the sidewalk and ramming it into my stomach. Also, I felt very conspicuous. I wanted to be a normal person just like everybody else. With Cosma, I was so much faster. My confidence went up so much I thought I could conquer the world." And she pretty much did. One major step was deciding she was going to run competitively. A sighted runner friend volunteered to be her partner and away they went, tethered appropriately by a required two-and-a-half foot dog leash. Her first race was a five kilometer in Boston sanctioned by the U.S. Association of Blind Athletes. A barista for more than 20 years at Starbucks, Rogers eventually moved behind the cash register. "I tell people I had to quit making coffee because customers didn't like it when I had to stick my finger in their cup to see if it was full." She decided to learn Braille so she could develop a monthly story hour for kids. "Not easy for someone 45 years old," she quipped. "I'm not great at it but I know enough to get by." Next came a change she never saw coming. A friend wanted her to attend a yoga class. "A pretty sissy thing for a runner and weightlifter," she snickered. But she went anyway and she said it only took two weeks to realize how much it was changing her life. She headed to school and two years later earned her yoga teaching credentials that allowed her to teach teachers. Since then she has created a class called "Come as You are Able," for the disabled. "Anybody can participate, but if you are sighted you need to wear a blindfold. You learn to seek vision from within." Cindy Rogers is currently teaching her "Come As You Are Able" class at Inner Vision Yoga in Chandler every Tuesday from noon to 1pm. For more information about Cindy's class or dozens of others at the Chandler or Tempe locations, visit InnerVisionYoga.com or call 480.632.7899. | ||||||||
» Back to Top | ||||||||
| NEW FICTION AND NONFICTION The Children's Book by A.S. Byatt / $17.95 / Paperback  "This is the perfect book for balmy fall days. It begs to be read with a cup of tea and a scone by your side. It is hard to put down and I was sad to finish it. Byatt is an incredible storyteller—she uses myth, psychology, and fairytales—and this novel has stories within stories. You learn about the beginnings of the Arts & Crafts movement, British aristocracy, the friends of Oscar Wilde, early Fabians, nudists, and most importantly the strange and convoluted relationships that develop among family members and their immediate sets of friends. She's an amazing novelist." —GayleFROM THE PUBLISHERS: Super Sad True Love Story by Gary Shteyngart / $26.00 / Hardcover 
In a very near future—oh, let's say next Tuesday—a functionally illiterate America is about to collapse. But don't that tell that to poor Lenny Abramov, the thirty-nine-year-old son of an angry Russian immigrant janitor, proud author of what may well be the world's last diary, and less-proud owner of a bald spot shaped like the great state of Ohio. Despite his job at an outfit called Post-Human Services, which attempts to provide immortality for its super-rich clientele, death is clearly stalking this cholesterol-rich morsel of a man. And why shouldn't it? Lenny's from a different century—he totally loves books (or "printed, bound media artifacts," as they're now known), even though most of his peers find them smelly and annoying. But even more than books, Lenny loves Eunice Park, an impossibly cute and impossibly cruel twenty-four-year-old Korean American woman who just graduated from Elderbird College with a major in Images and a minor in Assertiveness.After meeting Lenny on an extended Roman holiday, blistering Eunice puts that Assertiveness minor to work, teaching our "ancient dork" effective new ways to brush his teeth and making him buy a cottony nonflammable wardrobe. But America proves less flame-resistant than Lenny's new threads. The country is crushed by a credit crisis, riots break out in New York's Central Park, the city's streets are lined with National Guard tanks on every corner, the dollar is so over, and our patient Chinese creditors may just be ready to foreclose on the whole mess. Undeterred, Lenny vows to love both Eunice and his homeland. He's going to convince his fickle new love that in a time without standards or stability, in a world where single people can determine a dating prospect's "hotness" and "sustainability" with the click of a button, in a society where the privileged may live forever but the unfortunate will die all too soon, there is still value in being a real human being. Everything Matters! by Ron Currie Jr. / $15.00 / Paperback  In this novel rich in character, Junior Thibodeau grows up in rural Maine in a time of Atari, baseball cards, pop Catholicism, and cocaine. He also knows something no one else knows-neither his exalted parents, nor his baseball-savant brother, nor the love of his life (she doesn't believe him anyway): The world will end when he is thirty-six. While Junior searches for meaning in a doomed world, his loved ones tell an all-American family saga of fathers and sons, blinding romance, lost love, and reconciliation—culminating in one final triumph that reconfigures the universe. A tour de force of storytelling, Everything Matters! is a genre-bending potpourri of alternative history, sci-fi, and the great American tale in the tradition of John Irving and Margaret Atwood.Inherent Vice by Thomas Pynchon / $16.00 / Paperback  In this lively yarn, Thomas Pynchon, working in an unaccustomed genre that is at once exciting and accessible, provides a classic illustration of the principle that if you can remember the sixties, you weren't there.It's been a while since Doc Sportello has seen his ex-girlfriend. Suddenly she shows up with a story about a plot to kidnap a billionaire land developer whom she just happens to be in love with. It's the tail end of the psychedelic sixties in L.A., and Doc knows that "love" is another of those words going around at the moment, like "trip" or "groovy," except that this one usually leads to trouble. Undeniably one of the most influential writers at work today, Pynchon has penned another unforgettable book. More new releases » | ||||||||
Site and Event Search
